


friday night blues

by Ashling



Category: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: (and also sort of post-het. mid-het if you will., Comfort, Comforting with home-cooked meal, Cooking, F/M, Fluff, Light Pining, Mutual Pining, Pre-Het, het in one of its sorta-kinda-not-really platonic stages), the whole fic is just them being cute, this was supposed to be 300 words I'll have you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: and John Ambrose, and some comfort pasta
Relationships: John Ambrose McClaren/Lara Jean Song-Covey
Comments: 19
Kudos: 41
Collections: Flash In The Pan: A Food Flash Exchange





	friday night blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



London has some of the best _everything_ the world has to offer, and Margot made her promise to make the most out of her study abroad, but it’s only her second Friday in the city and already Lara Jean wants to go home. She feels horribly guilty about it, but it’s the truth. The class load itself is relatively light, but it’s been such an intense two weeks. 

First there was the jet lag, and settling in, and that took too much energy to let her feel homesick; then her new roommate Magda got unexpectedly sick and Lara Jean’s older sister (or middle sister, really) instincts kicked in, so she nursed Magda until finally Magda gave up and and went home for the week.

And now her courses are actually getting serious. Her Anthro prof is hard to understand, both because of a thick accent and because, being a gentle but intense genius, he can’t properly understand how to communicate with a group of intelligent but non-Einstein-level students. And Lara Jean feels horribly out of place in her creative writing workshop, where it seems to be all either rosy-cheeked girls named Emma or blue-eyed boys named Mark, and they’re all ten times edgier than she is, like detailed-oral-sex-in-the-first-short-story edgy, which the professor seems to love. Her first big piece she had intended to center around the main character making mandu with her hands as a metaphor for family legacy, but at the last minute she panicked about it seeming too, well, too syrupy and juvenile and way too...affirmative-action-flavored. She gutted it by like two and a half scenes (not to mention every single mandu reference) before offering up the poor thing to be picked over by a group of peer reviewers. The worst part was that they weren’t unkind. They were actually very nice about her story. They were just bemused by it, people seeing a llama loose in a dog park.

As a crowning touch, Margot’s new job as backpacking guide collided with a really bad storm, which meant she was out of contact for a day and a half, during which time both Lara Jean and her father ended up convincing themselves she must’ve been blown off the mountain and/or eaten by a mountain lion. By the time Margot turned up, completely unharmed and blithe about the whole ordeal, Lara Jean’s nerves were completely shot. And even though that was yesterday, she still hasn’t really gotten over the stress. She hates being apart from her family, and there’s no oven in her tiny apartment, so Stress Baking is out of the question. 

The thing is, she shouldn’t _have_ to stress bake. It’s a Friday night! This is what pop songs are made of: she’s young and pretty and single and in London and she has a blue skirt she bought for just such an occasion. Except what she really wants is to poke her dad until he makes her pasta, and then eat it with Kitty on the sofa watching The Golden Girls, and then fall asleep on the sofa under a big fluffy blanket. So she’s compensating by opening a sleeve of poor Magda’s leftover custard creams and completely zoning out to a soothing, extremely geeky podcast about how golf courses evade taxation. It’s kind of working. It’s not exactly joyful, but it is relaxing. 

Until there’s a knock at the door. 

Setting aside the biscuits, Lara Jean wraps herself in her entire quilt and grabs the most weapon-like thing to hand, a big black Maglite flashlight.

“It’s just me,” a voice calls. “Sorry it’s so late. There was traffic.”

Lara Jean would assume that it’s a guy who got the wrong apartment number, but then, that’s an American accent, and the voice does sound kind of familiar. Against her better judgment, she walks towards the door and calls, “Have we met?” 

Her phone vibrates. It’s a text.

 _John Ambrose: I’m pretty sure we have_ 😉

Every safety consideration flies right out of Lara Jean’s head, the curiosity is so strong. She unbolts and unlocks the door, throwing it wide open.

It’s definitely John Ambrose. His hair’s a bit taller than it was when last they saw each other, and he seems a bit bigger, but she recognizes the wine-colored v-neck sweater at a glance. And the smile.

She exclaims something— _oh my God!_ —and then she has her arms around his neck, he has his arms around her waist, and the big quilt is the only bit of her that’s touching ground. His skin’s cold from the autumn breeze, but he smells of something warm and sweet and fragrant. He smells so good, and Lara Jean closes her eyes for a minute and just forgets about everything else.

Eventually, though, Lara Jean’s feet reach the floorboards of her apartment again, and she opens her eyes, and reality sets in. 

“How are you here?” she says.

John Ambrose spreads his hands in a dramatic gesture, like some kind of street magician. “The wonders of automobile transportation.”

“You know there’s an ocean, right? Fish, saltwater, and everything.”

“Ah, it’s fine. There was a tunnel.”

“I feel like if there was a tunnel under the Atlantic, I’d know about it.”

“A Chunnel. I was in Paris.”

“Oh.” That makes sense. Except that it _doesn’t_. “But that’s an eight hour trip!” It’s a guess, but still, Lara Jean is aghast.

A little discomfort creeps in at the corners of John Ambrose’s smile. “Five, really.”

“You’re rounding down, which means six or seven.”

He looks sheepish. “Now that I’m hearing it, it does sound a little crazy. It does sound like maybe I completely lost it.”

“Did you?” Despite her best intentions, Lara Jean’s overactive imagination is coming up with some very intense scenarios. Like, maybe somehow John Ambrose hadn’t heard about her breakup with Peter for five months and then just yesterday someone told him and he threw all his stuff in his car to find her and tell her that even though they’ve been “just friends” for the past couple years, he—

“Your dad asked me to FaceTime you because he thought you were stressed out and homesick,” John Ambrose says, “and his patient looks like she’s gonna be in labor for a long time, so he can’t do it himself.”

Or that. That makes way more sense. 

Her dad has always been very good with her friends, boyfriends, exes, crushes, acquaintances, allies, teachers, tutors, coaches, and colleagues. The only people he has no idea how to handle are Lara Jean’s enemies, and since she’s very confrontation-averse, she has precious few of those. He once made Lara Jean’s math tutor chicken noodle soup because he heard he had come down with a cold. And this was a year _after_ Lara Jean stopped needing a tutor. So it’s really not that out of the ordinary to find out that her dad and John Ambrose have each other’s numbers.

John Ambrose peeks around Lara Jean’s shoulder, and she sees her room through his eyes: the empty space where all Magda’s stuff used to be, the bare mattress, the biscuit crumbs on the fake wood floor, the telltale half-empty box of red ramen packages on the kitchen counter. Zero schoolwork to be seen; all her textbooks are stacked beside the bed and all her notebooks are in her backpack, over which she’s thrown another blanket so she can forget about it. It’s not even 7pm yet. 

Er. Yikes.

He doesn’t seem bothered, though. “Is it okay if I come in?” he says. “And use your bathroom?”

“Oh, for sure.” Lara Jean takes his suitcase, a battered, old-fashioned leather thing, and points. “Right that way.”

It takes him a few minutes in the bathroom, during which time Lara Jean busies herself with lugging the suitcase to the foot of the empty bed, sweeping the biscuit crumbs under her bed using a slipper, and putting on her kettle for some tea. Something about these little tasks soothes her, and when John Ambrose emerges, Lara Jean has realized that, first and foremost, she’s just really happy to have him here. Anything else is just details.

Of course, as soon as she has that epiphany, he says, “I thought this would be better than Facetime, but it has occurred to me since that this might be kind of stressful itself, being a hostess? And maybe creepy? But a few of my cousins live in London, so if you’d like me to leave so you can get a good night’s sleep, I can head out right away, no hard feelings.”

He’s so earnest. The way he says _creepy,_ with a bit of a cringe, half an apology already writing itself on his face. 

“No,” Lara Jean says firmly. “You’re exactly who I wanted to see.” Even if she didn’t know it before she got his text, she knows this is true.

“Yeah?” He’s pleased, but uncertain.

“You remember bingo? You were talking about how you couldn’t wait to get older, and I agreed, and we ended up deciding we were both lame, but like, in a cool way?”

“Yeah,” John Ambrose says, and he says it with _of course_ tucked in there: _of course, how could I forget?_

Lara Jean is glad that she’s only got a couple packs of fairy lights on, instead of the harsh white glare of the ugly apartment lighting. Maybe she’ll get away with blushing. 

“That’s kind of how I’m feeling right now,” she says. “I just want to be lame and feel cool about it. Or actually, scratch that. I want to do nothing, and feel no type of way about it at all. And it’s possible that you’re the only person I can do that with, at least in Europe.”

“That sounds perfect,” says John Ambrose. Finally, another one of his hearty smiles. Lara Jean feels a pang of what she chooses to call success. “And I came prepared.”

That sounds very promising, but just then the kettle starts whining. John Ambrose goes off to do something with his suitcase, and Lara Jean makes two cups of Earl Grey, one with cream and plenty of sugar for her, and one with just cream, for him. He’s always had less of a sweet tooth than she has. She still remembers.

Eventually, John Ambrose joins her in the kitchen, wearing a pair of red and black plaid pyjama pants, and a red and black Model UN shirt that’s so big it goes halfway down his thighs. It’s so classically John Ambrose, she has to smile. He’s always been a bit particular about aesthetics and sensations, symmetry and things matching, which she thinks is cute.

One by one, he starts setting down the contents of his bag onto her counter. And they really are a strange array of things. There’s produce, cans, even some cheese, although nothing that would go bad on a six-hour drive.

“I’ve never seen anyone who brings a bag of groceries with them on international trips,” says Lara Jean. But she says it like she means it: a compliment of sorts.

“Most people don’t have a stove guaranteed at the other end.” He picks up a box of spaghetti. “Can I interest you in a second dinner?”

“I’m as hungry as I am short.” Which, despite the biscuits, is true. Lara Jean heads for the pot in the sink, and begins to wash up. “I’ll be your sous chef.”

“I like the sound of that.” He starts poking around her kitchen, finding out where things are: the garbage can, the single huge cutting board, the box of takeaway chopsticks. When he reaches her second garbage can, the one with the lid, he opens it and begins to laugh. 

“What?” Lara Jean demands, and then: “Oh. Yeah. I eat rice like four times a week. Plus, my grandma always had a bin full of it, and I wanted my kitchen to be just like hers when I was a kid.”

“I like it,” John Ambrose says. “You’re well suited to the next zombie apocalypse.”

“We both are. Wait, are those sardines?”

He holds up the little gold tin to confirm, with a placating note in his voice: “I promise it won’t turn out weird.”

“Okay, I trust you.” 

The next few minutes are homey, and Lara Jean savors them carefully, trying to tuck them away in her memory for other times when she’ll need them. She plays Rosalía on her phone, love songs only, and hopes that John Ambrose doesn’t speak any Spanish, and then she leans against the counter and watches him work. Water and a dash of salt in the pot; olive oil in the saucepan. He won’t let her help until he’s cut up four shallots and the sting of them makes his eyes water so badly he can’t cut them anymore, just stands there crying and laughing and swearing that he’ll be fine in a minute, any minute now. Lara Jean laughs along for a while, and then she nudges him out of the way with her hip and cuts up the last two shallots, and the garlic, and manages to dump the whole lot into the saucepan before her eyes have a chance to water. The sizzle and the smell of it is delicious; the warmth on her back when he peeks over her shoulder is even better. 

It takes the shallots a while to cook, and while Lara Jean stirs occasionally, adding a bit of water now and then to stop them from burning, she asks John Ambrose questions. He tells her everything, gives out answers with an honesty that would read as either dishonesty or self-destruction if this was a conversation between anyone but him and her. If she wants the petty and the unexpected, he’ll give her that; if she wants the basics, he’ll give her that; if she wants the extremely personal, he’ll give her that, unflinching. Somehow everything flows into everything else. Somehow she learns that the car is an unofficial rental from his friend Sophie, with no insurance save the knowledge that she could get him socially excommunicated if she wanted to, and he usually rides around a used bike he bought his bike for £200 plus five jars of stolen honey, and it’s all right, morally, that he stole the honey, because he’d been working for a restaurateur who ended up being an asshole and never paid up for dozens of hours of overtime. Somehow, she learns those details, and also learns that his heart’s been broken once and only once since they last spoke. Not by a girlfriend but by a friend, which doesn’t make it any better. Lara Jean remembers how things went with Gen, but this is something that dwarfs that, and there’s a note in John Ambrose’s voice when he talks about it, something that sparks recognition inside her: not all things are the same, and this is at once profoundly sad and a cause for even greater curiosity—maybe hope. Hope for what, exactly, she won’t name just yet.

Lara Jean could listen to him forever, but eventually the shallots have caramelized, turned a translucent golden-brown and sweet. The addition of sardines only gives her a couple more minutes, and tomato paste a couple more. She’s almost sad when it’s finished, when they’re both sitting on folding chairs pulled up to the kitchen counter with bowls of spaghetti, because after pasta always comes sleepiness, and she’s afraid he’ll go in the morning, or else that she’ll discover it was all a dream.

She’s not sad for long. The spaghetti is magnificent, sweet and savory and layered with so much flavor that they both shut up until they’ve cleared their first bowls. Over seconds, there’s a little more talk, but it’s contented, comes in drips and spatters like leftover rain, mostly about inconsequential things. By the time Lara Jean does the dishes—she’ll let him cook for her but something in her father’s way of hospitality absolutely cannot handle letting a guest do the dishes—she finds that their roles have reversed, she’s somehow the one talking most of the time, and that he doesn’t seem to mind. With other people, she’d have to cover up all the insecurity and homesickness of the past couple weeks, or else feel guilty about making them listen to her whine. Or she’d tell the truth, but with a humorous, exaggerated slant, milking it for entertainment value, self-deprecating every few sentences. Not with John Ambrose. She says what she thinks, what she feels, and she finds the process steadies her, anchors her. She finds herself remembering good things about the past two weeks, too, so she can tell him about them: the old landlady who promised to let Lara Jean name one of the kittens when her cat gives birth next month, the way the morning air smells of fresh promise and fresh bread, the line cook at her work-study who’s teaching her knife skills with the intensity of a drill sergeant and the patience of a saint. By the time the two of them have finally put everything away, set up John Ambrose’s bed, and gotten washed up, Lara Jean finds herself looking forward not only to the next day, but the next week, the next month.

They have spaghetti with a fried egg on top for breakfast the next day, which proves that she was right to be optimistic, and then he looks at her and says, "What's next, Lara Jean?" and she says, without thinking, "Anything you want."

"Be careful," he says. With the sunlight slanting in the window, his eyes have gone honey-gold. There's still the traces of a smile on his lips, but she knows better than to take that at face value.

She says, "I don't have to, with you." And she means it too.

"Well, we have the rest of the weekend."

This is true. Also true: they have the rest of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> a) John Ambrose is The Dream Boyfriend just as Lara Jean is The Dream Girlfriend  
> b) [the recipe is real](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSVI5oqtlAo) and it is a delight. Can personally confirm


End file.
